


white sands

by amaelamin



Category: Infinite (Band)
Genre: Friendship, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 07:52:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7609882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amaelamin/pseuds/amaelamin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>fic prompt: Canon-verse/band: Myungsoo convinces Sungyeol to spend their day off together in Busan for a casual day of exploring and photo taking. The day ends up becoming more hectic than they bargained for as they try to avoid being recognized.</p>
            </blockquote>





	white sands

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on AFF on 5 dec 2013.

It’s quiet, in the way that quiet is relative; relative to the noise of coordi noonas and makeup artists and managers and photographers and Dongwoo’s firework laughter and Woohyun talking low on his phone and Sunggyu’s computer game sounds in the short bursts of free time they had and Howon’s snores as he tried to steal a few moments of rest in between shoots and interviews and Sungjong’s ability to fill a room even when he was doing nothing. That had been the day before – today, it was just the sounds of even breathing and soft snores in the dark of their shared room. Not silent, but a quiet space in the midst of their noisy lives.

Sunggyu is passed out in the cot the hotel had given them, exhausted from the bustle of the day before and endless interviews and photograph shoots that took less than half the time it took for them to get ready for the shoots themselves. It turned out a scheduling conflict had been a blessing in disguise, even as their managers had argued heatedly over the phone with god knew who – transport operators, PDs, broadcasting stations, it didn’t matter. They had a day off, and they had collapsed into bed around one a.m., intending to stay there until someone dragged them away.

But now Myungsoo was awake, a dry itching behind his eyes making it impossible to sleep any further. He rolled over to crack an eye open at his phone – nine o’clock. When was the last time they managed to sleep eight undisturbed hours a night? It was unheard of, and here he was, his body prompting him to wakefulness as if he had another concert to perform, another interview to sit through, another photoshoot to be handsome for.

He rolled back, Sungyeol pulling the sheets higher up his body as Myungsoo’s movements tugged them away. He was the lightest sleeper in the world, which probably was the reason why he didn’t mind sleeping with Myungsoo in the same bed – Myungsoo (usually) slept like the dead, hardly moving at all throughout the night.

“Yeol?” Myungsoo whispered, putting out a hand to poke Sungyeol in the back.

Sungyeol turned his head towards Myungsoo slightly, indicating that he was awake and listening but probably not for very much longer.

“Let’s go out.”

Sungyeol turned onto his back at this to send Myungsoo a slit-eyed incredulous look.

“ _Why?_ ”

Sungyeol’s voice was sleep-rough and low, cracking at the end of the word. Sungyeol sleepy and muzzy-headed, hair flat and face plain was when Myungsoo loved him the best, even as he knew the reason behind it was selfish; this was the Sungyeol other people beyond their own members rarely saw, and one that he had the privilege of seeing on a daily basis. Myungsoo wriggled closer to whisper, afraid of waking Sunggyu hyung up and destroying his plans in the process.

“We’re in Busan. We should go to the beach.”

Sungyeol pushed his face away and rolled again onto his side, showing Myungsoo his back in answer.

“ _Yeol,_ ” Myungsoo insisted, and that was how they ended up trying to sneak out the back entrance of their hotel half an hour later, baggy hoodies, sunglasses and face masks firmly in place.

“If we can get away from the hotel fast enough they won’t even know we’re not still in there,” Myungsoo muttered, sticking close to Sungyeol as they inched their way out through the carpark exit, trying to spot any girls hanging around the back way; Myungsoo didn’t need to explain who ‘they’ were. Some days he didn’t know whether he loved or hated the fans; today, he just wanted them to leave him alone.

Of course, the clothes they were wearing gave them away to anyone who knew what they were looking for – ‘idol’ written all over their black skinny jeans, designer hoodies and giant shades plus Myungsoo’s trademark DSLR, but they were hoping it was early enough in the morning for them to be able to escape into a quiet local eatery for breakfast and then somehow make their way to the beach after. That latter part, they hadn’t figured out how yet.

“I don’t think anyone’s out there,” Sungyeol said, and they made a break for it. Ten minutes later they were sitting in a small homely restaurant they had darted into, delightedly finding that the only dish on the menu was the Busan specialty of pork soup and rice. They inhaled their food and congratulated each other on their luck, the food somehow tasting better because it was seasoned with Successful Covert Escape. Myungsoo tried to decide which of their managers to tell where they were so Sunggyu hyung wouldn’t fly into a panic when he woke up to find the room was empty; Jungryul hyung, Hyoan hyung, Youngjun hyung or Gonam hyung – Sungyeol settled firmly on Hyoan hyung, because he had the softest heart of all the others and also the biggest soft spot for Sungyeol.

“Why am I not surprised?” Myungsoo laughed quietly, typing lightning-fast while he took another mouthful of his soup-rice. “Forever playing favourites.”

“I can’t help it if he likes me the best,” Sungyeol shrugged, feeling a warm glow for his darling manager hyung. “Which will come in handy if we’re in trouble later.”

“As long as we’re back in time to leave,” Myungsoo said, more a personal reminder than anything.

They leave cautiously after paying the owner, bellies full and warm and a few new ‘artistic’ photos in Myungsoo’s camera (as Sungyeol liked to teasingly call them) of the view out into the street, the owner ahjumma almost in shadow as she stood like the guardian between two worlds.

“Is Howon hyung visiting his parents later?”

“Should be,” Myungsoo answered as they weaved through a morning food market, haphazardly guessing the general direction of the beach. The market buzzed around them, wholesalers and housewives haggling over the super-fresh fish, and the feeling of being completely insignificant to the people hurrying up and down past them was both disconcerting and welcome; it was hard to forget their training at times like these, when making themselves and Infinite known was the foundation for everything they did. Myungsoo’s camera was glued to his face, relying on Sungyeol to guide him through the narrow paths in between stalls to make sure he didn’t end up accidentally stepping in one of the numerous tubs the shopkeepers used to showcase their wares and end up having to pay hundreds of thousands of won in spoilt fish.

Sungyeol noticed a stall owner’s daughter staring at the two of them, and then start to tug at her mother’s arm excitedly when she could see the both of them more clearly.

“Wave and disappear,” Sungyeol alerted Myungsoo, and they both sent the girl a quick wave of the hand before taking a random right-turn away from her, walking fast.

“How is this even a disguise when they can recognize us under everything?” Sungyeol half-complained, unsure whether to be annoyed or still gratified that people this far away from Seoul knew who they were. _Or probably just knew who Myungsoo was,_ he thought, internally shaking his head at himself.

The market was like a maze – Sungyeol giving into temptation to stop at every food stall and try to charm the ahjumma owners into giving him a free taste of the snacks they sold and buying even more until he was near-bursting.  

“You have to be out of money already,” Myungsoo rolled his eyes as Sungyeol pulled him into a sashimi restaurant.

“ _You_ still have money, don’t you?” Sungyeol grinned over his shoulder, in his usual what-is-yours-is-mine attitude when it came to Myungsoo. “Don’t pretend you don’t want to eat.”

And he did; Myungsoo loved to eat, and Sungyeol was the only one he truly felt comfortable stuffing himself around. Woohyun watched his weight too strictly, Sunggyu would nag because he felt the need to, Dongwoo and Howon had certain foods they would avoid because of their need to keep in top shape, and Sungjong was rather indifferent to most things but meat, which he was potentially capable of murdering people over. Myungsoo often wondered what he would have done if he hadn’t ended up in the same group as Sungyeol, because he knew idols who weren’t really friends with anyone in their groups; sure, after a while you knew everything there was to know about one other because you lived cheek by jowl and you couldn’t get away from one another if you tried, and you supported one another blindly because that meant supporting yourself, but you weren’t friends, not really. He didn’t want to think about how depressing that had to be, the mask you were required to wear most hours of the day eventually feeling more like a cage. Without Sungyeol Myungsoo would still have had Sungjong, probably, and Dongwoo – he loved all their members, truthfully. But not like he loved Sungyeol, and he allowed himself a moment of embarrassment at that thought. No one else would have let Myungsoo drag him out of bed this morning, for starters.

They tried to decide between asking for directions to Songjeong beach and finding their way to it themselves; avoiding Haeundae because it was bound to be packed. Sungyeol thought it was a walkable distance, but Myungsoo totally disagreed, and finally they decided to ask the oldest stall owner in the market because the chances of this grandfather knowing much about Inkigayo or Destiny or Shut Up Flower Boy Band were, likely, very low.

The problem with talking to very old locals, however, was that their Busan dialect was so strong that neither one of the two could understand a full sentence the grandfather said. Thanking the smiling old man with hesitant bows, they walked away even more confused than before.

“I think he said we should take a bus,” Myungsoo suggested.

“How on earth do you figure that out? You can’t speak Busan satoori!”

“I listen when Howon hyung talks to his parents on the phone!”

Sungyeol speeded up away from Myungsoo, pretending to be creeped out. “Stalker!”

Myungsoo ran after Sungyeol in order to kick him, and they ended up running together down the whole length of the street.

*

“Myungsoo oppa! Sungyeol oppa!”

The shrill shout came unexpectedly, the two of them having given up temporarily on their search for the beach in order to drift in and out of a pretty shopping street they found themselves in. Passersby turned around to see who the schoolgirl was calling out to, her group of friends glowing in a state of high excitement, and Myungsoo looked up in alarm from where he was admiring the window display of a bookstore. Without thinking, Sungyeol grabbed Myungsoo by the front of his hoodie and dragged him into the safety of the next establishment, the door tinkling shut behind them only for the salesgirl to stare bug-eyed at the two men who’d just burst into her tiny lingerie shop.

“Uh,” Sungyeol said, wherever he looked his eyes landing on lace and everything he had no way of seeing on a real woman, the regret of a thousand lonely jerkoffs in the dorm’s small bathroom rising in his throat.

Myungsoo slapped away Sungyeol’s hand as he lifted it to touch the soft fabric of a nearby mannequin’s nightie, and pulled him out again, bowing his apologies.

“Genius!” he hissed at Sungyeol, looking for somewhere else to hide. “The last thing we need is photos of us in a women’s underwear shop!”

Sungyeol just sighed sadly. “Did you see that red bra? The one with lace up the straps? Sigh.”

“I’ll buy it for you for your birthday, okay? Only if you promise to wear it for me,” Myungsoo sniped as they walked into much safer territory – a clothes boutique.

“You’d have to buy the matching panties, too,” Sungyeol answered carelessly, wandering off to look at the snapbacks and leaving Myungsoo’s mouth to go dry at the thought of Sungyeol in red lacy panties.

They stayed in the store until the fangirls outside had thankfully gone away, upset that their oppas didn’t seem to want to come out any time soon. Myungsoo tried on what seemed like his twentieth pair of pants, Sungyeol again shaking his head no after giving him a once-over.

“It fits too weirdly in the crotch,” Sungyeol stood up close to tug at the tops of the thighs of the pants Myungsoo was wearing. “See? It sags.”

Myungsoo resolved then that he would probably never confess to Sungyeol, because that would mean moments like these would end – Sungyeol utterly comfortable and easy with him, careless about seeing Myungsoo in his boxers as he changed in and out of pairs after pairs of jeans and thinking nothing of the warmth of Myungsoo’s body under his fingers through thin layers of clothes. At the back of his mind he sometimes had a feeling Sungyeol already knew, but was ignoring it as long as Myungsoo did too.

Myungsoo paid for the one and only pair of jeans Sungyeol had approved and scoped out the street from the door before they deemed it safe enough to go outside again. Myungsoo was jumpy, though, knowing how well-connected fangirls were; now that they’d been seen here they probably had only a limited amount of time to walk around freely before more converged.

“I have a solution,” Sungyeol said, Myungsoo unconsciously pushing him along faster than they would normally walk. “You haven’t watched the second Hunger Games, have you?”

Sungyeol pointed to a small theatre up ahead, and Myungsoo grinned up at him.

“I want salty popcorn,” Myungsoo pleaded as they hurriedly made their way to the theatre.

“No,” Sungyeol replied evenly.

*

“Oh man, that was so good,” Myungsoo enthused immediately as the lights came on, bits of popcorn still sticking to the front of his hoodie. Sungyeol helped him brush the popcorn crumbs away as Myungsoo chattered away about the movie, shaking his head that more had ended up decorating Myungsoo than in Myungsoo’s mouth. “But I don’t understand why she keeps cheating on Gale.”

Sungyeol handed Myungsoo his winter coat that was draped together with his over the empty seat in front of them along with a disbelieving look. “Katniss doesn’t like Gale.”

Myungsoo stopped and turned abruptly, making Sungyeol who was following him down the aisle to the exit bump into his back with a grumble. “Of course Katniss likes Gale! He’s so much more her type than Peeta!”

“No, what I meant is that I don’t think she really likes either one of them,” Sungyeol clarified, giving Myungsoo a little push to make him start walking again. “She doesn’t have time for that shit.”

“She _would_ have had time for Gale if she hadn’t become a Tribute,” Myungsoo argued stubbornly, sticking to his guns. “Peeta is just a distraction.”

“Does it _matter_ , Myungsoo?” Sungyeol laughed at him. “She’s fighting for her life. _And_ the lives of her family. Revolution! Oppression! Corruption! And you’re worried about a love triangle.”

 _Maybe because I’m stuck in a hopeless love of my own_ , Myungsoo thought dramatically, following the object of his affections out into the winter sunshine.

“Do you still want to go to the beach?” Sungyeol asked, pulling his coat closer around him. “It’s going to be really cold.”

“How often do you get to see the sea, Yeol?” Myungsoo wheedled, knowing Sungyeol couldn’t say no.

“Okay, fine, come on. But if I get sick it’ll be your fault.”

It took them probably forty minutes of walking before Myungsoo caught the first whiff of salt, turning excitedly round to Sungyeol with shining eyes. He wasn’t sure what it was about the beach that made him so – happy? That wasn’t the right word. More… contented. He liked the feeling of the overwhelming vastness of the ocean, reminding him how small and insignificant he was – he knew Sungyeol often felt the opposite, not wanting to confront how little his life meant when he was caught between the sea and the sky with no room for pomp and ceremony in between.

The sea came into view by degrees, sun reflecting off the water so dazzlingly on the horizon that Myungsoo couldn’t really tell where the sky ended and the sea began, even when he squinted. The wind chilled them to the bone within minutes of finally getting onto the beach, though, Sungyeol frowning additionally at the sand immediately finding a way into his shoes as if by magic. The beach wasn’t crowded – obviously they were part of only a small group of people who were willing to brave the winter cold to come and sit on the beach wrapped up in blankets and coats – they had a brief bicker then about how they’d might as well just gone to Haeundae in that case, which was easier to find and probably required less walking, but the quarrel blew over as quickly as it begun once Myungsoo offered to buy Sungyeol something hot to shut him up.

Myungsoo came jogging back after he’d bought them both steaming corn cobs from a nearby roadside stall to find that Sungyeol had triumphantly found a space for them in between two large rocks that blocked out the wind, but also most of the view down the beach.

“We can’t see the rest of the beach, Yeol.” Myungsoo explained, as if to someone stupid.

“You can hear the waves and see the sea, can’t you? And this way no one can see _us_ unless they’re right in front of us.” Myungsoo couldn’t argue with the wisdom of this, and so they settled down to munch their corn, two dark-coated lumps on the white sand.

They spent a long time quiet in each other’s company, knowing that the frenzy of tomorrow would bring more practice, more hurry-up-and-wait as they were ferried between schedules. Myungsoo knew Sungyeol was storing up the peace and silence within him as a center, a memory to go to when things got too hectic and he felt he was just too tired to carry on; they always carried on, of course, and knowing that there was peace and rest somewhere else in the world helped.

“Why are you staring at me?”

Myungsoo blinked, unaware himself that he’d been staring outright at Sungyeol’s side profile as Sungyeol contemplated the sea. Sungyeol still hadn’t turned to face him, face set tranquilly towards the gentle waves.

“Sorry, was thinking about something else,” Myungsoo replied quickly, picking up his camera for something to do. “The light here is good, do you want me to take a photo of you?”

Sungyeol snorted his assent, knowing that Myungsoo would find a way to take a photo of him that day whether he gave him permission or not. Myungsoo raised his camera and focused on Sungyeol's face, trying to capture everything that made Sungyeol _Sungyeol_ – his eyelashes, his full mouth, the closed ear piercings you could still see if you looked close enough, the skin that was back to being pale – and the moment he clicked the shutter, Sungyeol closed his eyes.

Myungsoo stared at the photo on the screen, taking in how serene Sungyeol looked against the rough grey of the rock behind him. The light made his skin look even paler against the contrast of his dark eyelashes, and Myungsoo felt one more part of his heart become irrevocably lost, going to join the other pieces that now belonged to Sungyeol.

“Thanks for asking me to come here,” Sungyeol was saying, and Myungsoo finally allowed himself to tear his eyes away from his best friend, letting the ocean swallow him whole.

Memories have a tendency to lose their vividness and intensity once time passes and more recent events become more entrenched in the mind, pushing older recollections out, but Myungsoo was always able to come back perfectly to that time with Sungyeol on Songjeong beach, feeling like the rocks protecting them from the wind were protecting them from the rest of the world as well, letting them just be Kim Myungsoo and Lee Sungyeol for half an hour, not Infinite’s visuals and the fantasies of thousands of girls. It was an emotion, not visual memory, that pinned it so clearly in his mind, the knowledge of being young and endlessly capable of anything – of being with the one person in his insane life he knew understood him from A to Z and didn’t shrink away; it would be easy to say that that emotion was love, but it could easily also have been gratitude, sympathy, security. Sungyeol anchored him when everything else around him was insane.

Hyoan hyung called then, warning them to be back soon if they didn’t want a tonguelashing, and so they turned together towards the end goal of home and warmth.

Sungyeol gave Myungsoo a look before they entered the street that housed their hotel, and Myungsoo didn’t have to ask. He understood.

*


End file.
